Month: May 2009

Beautiful Sunday Morning

It’s lovely out right now, likely to continue into a lovely day in the lower 70s°F. We’re down to the last week of school, but that doesn’t seem to make me any more caught up. Indeed, I sometimes feel even further behind. (The treasurer’s assistant assures me that “being caught up” is an illusion. I think she’s right.)

Still, I have moments of calm before the panic, and this is one of them. So I’ll take some time to write more about the Super Weekend of Fun that I had when my sister et al came in for Alumni.

As soon as I had nominated dad for the Newton Hall of Fame (I need to update that website with dad’s name), I called Amy to let her know and ostensibly pencil in the weekend of May 16th for coming to Ohio. It was another month or so until my superintendent informed me that not only was dad going to be inducted, he was the only inductee for the year. (They can induct up to 3 at one time each year.) I e-mailed Amy immediately and she began the process of getting herself & Rachel to Ohio for that weekend.

Later that evening, I told mom in secret about dad’s induction. Then it was just a matter of finding a way to get Amy & Rachel here and not letting the cat out of the bag. So one Saturday morning I told mom & dad some good news. “Amy & Rachel are going to come in for Alumni this year!” Dad was shocked, mom pretended to be. “Why?” “Well,” I explained with the excuse Amy & I had concocted, “It *is* the last Alumni in the old building. She wants to come & film in the old building with me giving a tour.” (That bit was true – we’d talked about it way back at Thanksgiving, IIRC.) So dad was no long suspicious, which was good.

Mom had some frequent flier miles laying around which she gave to the girls, so they were able to fly in for that weekend. They arrived late Wednesday night before Alumni weekend. Despite Thursday still being a work day for me, I had to come along for the pick up and chatted with folks in mom & dad’s kitchen until we all were too tired to continue. (It wasn’t too long after arriving – we were that tired.)

Dad wasn’t the only recipient of pre-planning for the weekend. Both Amy & Rachel have May birthdays, just 4 days apart from each other. And it happened to be Rachel’s 30th the day before they flew out. So Amy wanted a bit of a birthday surprise for Rachel, which I helped with. Since Rachel grew up on home-cooking from scratch, it stands to reason that her favorite birthday meal is… Kraft dinner, boiled wieners, and canned green beans. Heh. So that was planned for Thursday lunch. I walked home for that and it was quite yummy. I returned to work in my car, so that I could drive home to get back in time to meet an appraiser (part of my mortgage refinancing process). Once the appraisal was done, I returned to the parentals and we all headed off for more birthday evening fun.

We started by picking up the birthday cake for Rachel. She’s a wonderful scratch baker, but she does love store-bought cake. So I had ordered a cake from Kroger (grocery chain) which said “Happy 30th Rachel!” on it. I picked it up and hid it in the trunk (in case Rachel happened to look in there while we were shopping). Then the folks took us to the plot of land they are buying upon which their new house will be built. I took pictures of them by the “Sold” sign.

Next was shopping at Kohl’s. Turns out I was the only one who bought anything. (Well, mom bought a shirt which she later took back because it didn’t match the outfit she’d bought it for.) For supper, we went to Sakai, a Japanese bistro. We went to the hibachi side (mom’s first time having hibachi). We started out with sushi – crab salad sushi & California roll (which in this area is crab/fake crab, avocado, cucumber). Then we were entertained by Daniel San, our chef for the evening. The food was yummy and Daniel did a nice job. (I think he was younger than Rachel!)

We finished the evening with me & Amy working on her presentation for Friday. (She agreed to teach my Advanced Problems in Science class on grant-writing.) Then mom & dad & Rachel came over for cake & home made ice cream. (Another previously agreed plan was for me to make peanut butter ice cream, Rachel’s favorite.) We watched Gray’s Anatomy and had cake & ice cream. It was a great ending to a lovely day.

Well, time for me to go to church. Dad is preaching (actually, lecturing is probably a better term) about Evidence at the UU church in New Madison. If I didn’t dress up, I’d wear my “I [heart] Evidence” shirt. Heh.

Relaxing at the Lake

For 10 years or so elsaf and judiang have been joining me at my folks’ cottage at Lake Loramie every Memorial Day weekend. To me, summer doesn’t officially begin until I see the girls. Half of that has been fulfilled with Judi arriving last night at the airport. Elsa is currently driving south and probably has another half hour to hour yet to travel. (She’s been texting updates to Judi all day.)

Today, Judi and I have been indulging in lazy. It’s been lovely. After eating Judi’s second Cinnabon (she couldn’t resist them at the airport yesterday and bought a pair) for breakfast, I headed off to Wagner’s grocery for foodstuff. Then Judi and I lazed the morning away. After Elsa’s text around noon, I figured it would be a good idea to “turn on the fire” so we could have lunch. Judi and I grilled hot dogs and accompanied them with baked beans and snackies (homemade Chex Mix and not homemade Munchies). Tasty tasty.

After lunch, I installed Ubuntu 9.04 (netbook remix) onto our test 10″ Acer netbook (by “our” I mean the school’s – we have it for 30 days or so to test out and can do what we want with it during that time). Damn, Linux has gotten easier & easier to install. After running Live Linux to see if it could detect the wireless card (it could), I installed it. Hell, even the onboard video came works! Although I like the default look of 9.04, I’ll probably revert back to the normal look.

I decided to read awhile as the partition software worked its magic on the Acer and wound up falling asleep. But I didn’t sleep long and was back working on the Acer and then decided to work on getting supper ready. The pork was already marinading in my own mango concoction. I have just finished getting the veggies ready (green peppers, Vidalian onion, pineapple) for grilling. Elsa gets a break tonight, but tomorrow night she’s gonna be cooking up a storm. Or something. 🙂

It’s lovely to be sitting outside, looking over the lake, and typing on my itty bitty netbook. Listening to my iPod too. Heh. I am a geek.

Slowly shoveling my way out

May (the month) hit like an avalanche, but thankfully, I feel like someone’s finally handed me a shovel and I can dig my way out. As my absence of LJ posts has indicated, I’ve been very busy. I want to document my busy weekend from last week, but it will need to go into several posts or y’all will tl,dr me. (Well, you still might, heh.)

One of the most important things that happened last weekend was due to a letter I wrote back in December. I’ve intended for a number of years now to nominate my father for the Newton High School Hall of Fame, but knew he’d prefer if I didn’t and also figured he’d avoid going to the alumni banquet to receive it if he got it. So I’d figured I’d wait til his 50th reunion, knowing he’d attend that one. But my superintendent came to me this December saying it was certainly time that my dad was nominated as he was very deserving of it. So I decided to do it. The rest of this post will be the letter I wrote to the nomination committee. (I’ve munged the name(s) a bit, but the rest of the letter is just as I wrote it.)

WMS (called “M” by nearly everyone) attended Newton School for 51 years: twelve of those as a student, and the remaining time as an employee. He taught a number of classes over the years including introductory physical science, biology, chemistry, and physics. He was in charge of the Smoke Signal (the school newspaper) for a number of years. He ran the audio visual department for most of his career. And with the help of Mr T [the original, not the guy with mohawk & gold chains], M introduced Newton to the world of computers, eventually becoming the school’s first technology coordinator.

MS was one of the finest science teachers in the state of Ohio. His philosophy was that science was for everyone, and he did what he could to encourage students to take physics their senior year. Several times he took teams of Newton students to physics competitions where they often won. In 1970, M started what has become an annual tradition at Newton: The Catapult Competition. He implemented other engineering projects over the years, sometimes having students build radios, other times having them make come-back cans. He always kept up with science education and science in general and tried to impart new findings to his students. It’s interesting to note that when M began first grade at Newton, there were only two kingdoms defined in biology. By the time he retired, organisms had been reclassified to five kingdoms. As science grew, so grew M’s body of knowledge which he shared with his students.

M was more than just a teacher at Newton, however. He often put in extra hours to help Newton be a better school. Looking around the chemistry and physics lab, you can see a number of devices that he repaired or built from scratch in order for our students to experience the same learning opportunities that “rich” schools had. He often went to the army surplus store with the superintendent in order to find bargains for the school. He kept the gymnasium sound system running for far longer than it had any right to. Even when he was simply a father watching his girls in the Christmas program, he’d hop up to fix that sound system if it broke down during the show.

When M retired from teaching, he still worked a number of years as the technology coordinator for the school. It was at this time that I, his eldest daughter, started working at Newton as well, taking his position as chemistry and physics teacher. As much fun as he was as a father, he was even more fun as a co-worker and mentor. I’ve tried to keep up many of his excellent teaching practices in my own curriculum, continuing the tradition of the Annual Catapult Contest, adding some engineering projects of my own, revamping the Advanced Problems in Science course to include new advances in technology. To me, M (AKA dad) embodies all that is good at Newton: innovation, ingenuity, thrift, excitement, and a love of learning. He made learning fun for his students and he helped his alma mater to be one of the best schools around. It is for these reasons and more than I could mention that I nominate MS for the Newton Hall of Fame.

I’m proud of my daddy. 🙂

Productivity, thy name is trinalin

Wow, a productive day for me! Not in any order, today I

  • Roomba’d the place twice

  • Planted flowers in my window boxes (vinca aka periwinkle)

  • Talked with my sissy on the phone

  • Cleaned the bathroom

  • Did the laundry

  • Worked in the lab for 2 1/2 hours, getting it ready for the next experiment and backing up our test Acer Aspire One 10″ netbook (before I load new OSes onto it)

  • Went to Covington for BBQ chicken

  • Watched “The Fires of Pompeii” (DW season 4)

  • Talked with elsaf & judiang online

Needless to say, I’m worn out. Heh.

Regular College Classes? Done for now!

Phew! I finished my final essay for History and Philosophy of Science and turned it in. elsaf was nice enough to proof it (in its nearly-done state) and gave me many useful suggestions & corrections. Thanks again, hon!

I managed to complete both final papers on time, despite City of Heroes once again celebrating its anniversary by offering the game free for a week. Thankfully, I didn’t discover this until around midnight on Friday. So I spent a bit of time Friday night (OK, by “bit of time” I really mean “I got onto a task force team and got to bed after 4:30am”) playing and likewise on Saturday night (though not for nearly as late). I managed to curb the desire enough on Sunday to simply fiddle about with a couple of ‘toons rather than rack up hours of play time.

Anyhoo, feels good to be done. I had a fun time (sometimes too much fun – read too much, didn’t write enough) researching the history of the atom and showing how the scientific method also changed during the time. Hope the grade was sufficient to get me an A (or a B – anything less doesn’t count). 🙂

Book Meme 2009

Once again, Procrastination wasn’t enough to defeat me! Woot! I got my paper turned in at 10pm last night. 🙂 No idea if it’s any good (I think my midterm paper was better), but I got to say a lot of what I wanted to say. And lemme just say, the pharmaceutical industry’s got some s’plainin’ to do! (Eventually I’ll have both the midterm and the final paper published on my science blog (tls_scienceblog) once I get that moving again. Likely this summer.)

Anyhoo, as a break for my brain before I start researching my final paper for the History & Philosophy of Science class (the development of atomic theory & the scientific method), I have a meme about books that I’ve gakked from ravenskyewalker.

1. Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?

I read when I eat out on my own. But if I’m not doing that, then I don’t snack while reading most of the time.

2. Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?

Gah! Write in books? Next you’ll be asking if I bend the ears of a book?! (Do you know how hard it was for me to write in my college books? Damned difficult. I rarely did it.)

3. How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?

Old duplicate Doctor Who trading cards – Sylvester McCoy ones most usually. I also use bookmarks from the local bookstore (they put one in every batch they sell), receipts, bits of tissue. Whatever I have to hand. And then I get around to replacing the temporary one with a trading card. 🙂

4. Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?

Both. Usually fiction, but I enjoy reading science books and travelogues (stand up Michael Palin & Bill Bryson).

5. Hardcopy or audiobooks?

I’ll read/listen to anything. Hardcopy, eBook, audiobook. I have very few audiobooks (everything that Sylvester McCoy ever read, the freebies I recently tried from Audible & eMusic), but they are nice to listen to while cleaning, etc.

6. Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?

Although I prefer to reach a breaking point (section or chapter or end of entire book), I’ll stop if I need to.

7. If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away? Write it down to look it up later? Just try to infer what it means from the rest of the sentence, and keep going?

I just context clue it and may eventually think to look it up. However, I’m loving that I can instant look-up words in eBooks on my phone. Now I know that kites are more than just those big paper/plastic things kids love to fly in the sky.

8. What are you currently reading?

I’ve got Our Daily Meds & Side Effects partially read (was reading them for my ethics final paper, will probably finish ’em before I have to return ’em to the library). Am currently reading The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold in the bedroom. Am listening to Fool by Christopher Moore. Have an eBook started (early stages) on my phone, but I don’t recall the title. (It’s a Mercedes Lackey/someone else book from the Baen Library.) There’s also the science philosophy books from my History & Philosophy of Science class which I’ve read some of, but may not finish.

9. What is the last book you bought?

Academic Stimulus Package (the 4th book from Piled Higher and Deeper (PhD), a webcomic by Jorge Cham). Actually, I purchased a book this morning before work. Volume Two of Girls with Slingshots (a webcomic by Danielle Corsetto). Obviously it hasn’t arrived yet. Heh.

10. Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can read more than one at a time?

Look at #8 and then ask again. 🙂

11. Do you like re-reading books?

I do enjoy rereading books, which is (one reason) why I prefer to buy rather than borrow from libraries. Although I keep a record of when I finish a book, I never include reread books. So that still forces me to read books I haven’t read if I want to reach 50+ books in a year.